People want to get off fossil fuels. Its not a matter of which is more cost effective. Its a matter of how affordable solar and battery is. Its clear the technology has nearly arrived such that if a middle class household wanted to get off the grid, off coal, off gasoline for their car... they can do it and afford it. Even if its still more expensive, its within their reach where it wasn't before.

Is this really on the consumer side of dells sales? I've definitely seen it on the corporate side of their "premier" website. They also charge 6$ for a bunch of individual bios changes. If you're a big company getting a fleet of PCs and IT labour is at a premium then yeah it might be worth having Dell configure them instead.

Grade 13 was not optional if you wanted to go to university.
Grade 13 was eliminated by the Mike Harris government to save on education spending. It had nothing to do with giving Ontarians an unfair advantage (lol). In fact it was a disadvantage to be a year behind everyone else in the country.
They didn't just scrap grade 13. They planned way ahead. They changed the curriculum at grade 6 (I was in grade 7 when the new curriculum hit the grade 6ers). When I graduated 13, my grade 12 cohorts were just as educated.

Can you really study another culture without knowing some of their language?
You're argument isn't incorrect but it works the same way for programming language. You won't get anything valuable from it if you take the class just to get the credit.
The point of high school is to get your toe wet in a variety of fields. You don't know you have an aptitude for something until you try it. Take a foreign language, and take programming.
I grew up in english Canadian and it always baffles me how English speakers (especially in Canada) are so phobic about foreign languages.
"Two languages in one head!? No one can think at that speed!" ~ Eddie Izzard

At what age do we decide who takes what route in specialized education? At what age should general education turn into specialized education? I think grade 12 is a good end point for general education, what about you?
If the previous generation could get both a foreign language credit and a mathematics/logic credit why can't todays generation? They managed to become engineers in a specific field. Yes there are more specialized fields to chose from but why does it matter? Its scalable. Or are you suggesting too much general knowledge is being crammed into the k-12 curriculum?

Scrap foreign language and fractions. Just teach em how to flip burgers.
Chinese is incredibly useful BTW. The consumer base there is growing and no doubt if you know Chinese and English there is a good job waiting for you.

The purpose of k-12 should not be to train workers for our corporate overlords. k-12 is to instill a love of learning. Expose kids to the world so they can decide what route they want to take in life. I am really tired of this cold and sterile view of education.

Why is it one or the other? I managed to take Visual Basic AND French. Both equally useless.
Its simply not accurate to call any programming language a "foreign" language. Programming belongs in the mathematics and engineering side of academia, not language.

I'd agree that in North America learning a coding program will be more valuable to a student from a low income background. But catagorizing it as a foreign language is ridiculous and slimy, and nonacademic.